Tuesday, 10/10

It looks like History Jim might get to take it a little easier than usual next year.

As I was writing yesterday, I spent a good chunk of this year putting together stuff for the Marquette Regional History Center, so much so that I actually forgot that I had written a 3,000 word article for their newsletter. Well, as it's looking right now, I won't have quite that much work to do for them next year.

In fact, I may not have to do much original work at all in 2018.

Don't worry; I'm still doing stuff for them. But after getting together with all the people who decide what programs get put on when it appears that I'll be doing all old programs during 2018, which means that unless I wanna see if I can come up with something new for the walks (which, rest assured, I will) everything I'm scheduled to do is already put together.

Woo hoo!

There is a reason for this. Next year is the 90^th anniversary of what began as the Marquette County Historical Society, and they've already committed to putting on a bunch of programs that deal, even tangentially, with that. That also means that there are fewer slots available for next year, which means that I get a year off from researching original programs.

So what old stuff am I doing for them next year? Well, the first will be a rerun of a program I've already done twice, the walking tour about the Great Marquette Fire of 1868. The reason I'm doing it is that, if you do a little math in your head, you realize that 2018 is the 150^th anniversary of the fire. Because of that, on the exact sesquicentennial of the blaze that almost destroyed the city—June 11th, 2018—I'll be leading a bunch of people through downtown on what I'm thinking might be a slightly super-sized version of the original tour (assuming, of course, I can dig up any more information on it that I haven't yet found). We've even been talking to the city of Marquette about doing a few other events to commemorate the anniversary.

The other tour I'm doing? It's a reprise of the dock tour I did a couple of months ago, a tour that drew 192 people. Apparently there are a bunch of people who didn't get to go and want to see it, as well as some people who want to see it again. And since I've already discovered a few facts that I didn't know the last time around even those people won't be bored.

So I have that going for me.

I'm thinking that with a schedule that light that I won't be forgetting anything I do, unlike this year. And that's a good thing. After all, there's enough useless crap floating around in my brain as it is. It'll be nice to actually remember what's in there after I get done with it.

(jim@wmqt.com)